Despite the importance of cyanobacteria as the base of many ecological systems, their biotechnological applications, and their evolutionary relationship to plant and algal chloroplasts, molecular mechanisms of cyanobacterial division have remained largely unstudied. While cyanobacteria may share some division factors with other bacteria, several unique cyanobacterial features, including thylakoid membranes, multiple chromosome copies, and lack of nucleoid occlusion, distinguish them from classic prokaryotic model organisms and complicate extrapolation of their division mechanisms.
Cyanobacteria have been employed for the production of sustainable biofuels, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals due to their: (i) photosynthetic efficiency; (ii) low nutrient requirements; (iii) capacity to grow on non-arable landmass and with water supplies unfit for traditional agriculture; and (iv) ease of genetic manipulation. Despite the advantages of cyanobacteria, current practices for the cultivation, harvesting, and processing of cyanobacterial “crops” are expensive and infrastructure-intensive. These costs represent a significant economic barrier to cyanobacterial bioproduction, regardless of the specific target product. While research efforts have placed focus on improving photosynthetic efficiency or metabolic engineering in order to achieve higher total yields, there has been little progress on engineering cyanobacteria in order to relieve these harvesting/processing costs that currently prohibit widespread adoption.